Football has reclaimed its joys but violence still lurks

The shocking violence at West Ham provoked memories of the 1970s and 80s, prompting some to ask whether the dark days of football blighted by hooliganism are back, or never really went away.

The facts, though, are that fighting both inside and outside football grounds has declined greatly since the early 1990s, and people going to matches now generally feel safe.

That becalming has played a major part in people flocking back to football in huge numbers not seen since the mid-1960s, along with modernised grounds, the media's more positive portrayal of the game and the advent of huge new money in the Premier League.

Official figures buttress that view. In 1988-89, according to the Home Office, there were 6,185 football-related arrests in England's four professional divisions; the latest figures, for 2007-08, show there were 3,616. That was an average of 1.21 football-related arrests a match, representing one in 10,000 supporters, and less than a tenth of the arrests were for violence. The police have largely reduced their presence or quietly withdrawn – 41% of matches in 2007-08 were police-free.

However, it is not the whole truth to paint modern football as a shiny, happy carnival of multi-ethnic family fun in which hooliganism is a distant memory. While violence such as Tuesday night's is, thankfully, extremely rare, there is still a small group of men who engage occasionally in the dismal ritual of pre-arranging fights away from grounds.

Many lads who considered themselves "handy" back in hooliganism's heyday have expanded into middle age and "retired", but they can still be roused into action in extreme circumstances such as a meeting between West Ham and Millwall.

Hooliganism fell away for many reasons. There was palpable regret at matches in the late 1980s, after so many people had died in disasters, and many fans improved their behaviour themselves. The police arrested some of the "top boys" at many clubs, the new all-seater stadia dispersed groups to fixed seats and incorporated CCTV that can identify troublemakers. More broadly, the culture changed. Football was celebrated, not vilified, in the media and fans reclaimed its joys.

In the wake of Tuesday's violence the football authorities, police, government and the Football Supporters' Federation have all been emphasising how much hooliganism has diminished over the last 20 years. They were also realistic enough to accept that it still lurks in the culture, and the risk of it breaking out does not come much higher than a midweek cup tie between West Ham and Millwall.